


Disdained

by theprydonian_archivist



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Discipline, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-03
Updated: 2008-03-03
Packaged: 2018-07-15 00:55:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7198868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theprydonian_archivist/pseuds/theprydonian_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And we revere it, because it so calmly disdains to destroy us." - Rilke</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disdained

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Versaphile, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Prydonian](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Prydonian). Deciding that it needed to have a more long-term home, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact the e-mail address on [The Prydonian collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/theprydonian/profile).

He remembers things like the raw feeling of ice on his cheeks or the shriek of sinews as bones break.

He remembers loving the Master. He remembers hands on his throat and the burn in his head as he thought about breathing. He remembers teeth on his wrists and bruises.

“I forgive you.” The words have long sounded mocking to his own ears.

Now that he is alone again he listens for the beat of the drums beneath the quiet sounds. Beneath the throb of his own hearts, beneath the whirr of the TARDIS, beneath laughter. But he can never hear them, no matter how he strains. He never could. He will never know that sound, the sound of bloodshed and torment.

When he loved the Master, he thought about the blood on his hands. In dull moments when his hands lost their grip on the tangled viscera of the TARDIS or conversation dwindled in his mouth, he saw blood dried and caked beneath the Master fingernails, or in the lines of his wrists and palms. He saw the Master’s black shoes crunching through the bones of young women, the delicate heel breaking cheekbones, throats, popping eyeballs. It wasn’t exactly a turn on.

The memory of the Master eclipsed everything. He held humans’ hands, but they were so warm and fragile. Their nails never bit into his soft palm in just the right way. He took Rose out onto an icy sea once so that her hands became hard and frozen in his, and she lost herself in the sensation of gliding, of flying, while he fell hard, and the ice bit into his cheek like the Master’s fingers over a fresh bruise.

The Doctor tried not to allow himself to realise how the Master permeated everything, how he craved the feeling of fingers round his throat or nails against his thigh far more than any warm, human embrace.

The Master knew at once when he saw him again. Knew without really trying, his hands assured and familiar against old, mouldering flesh in the year that never was.

“I could tie your wrists together and hang you up by them because these old useless legs won’t hold you, will they? And then I could hold you steady by your ribcage and press so hard there would be bruises on the inside for weeks, and I could fuck you, fuck you until those feeble little bones inside your wrists just broke…”

The Doctor didn’t speak. The Master smiled.

“But I won’t. And it’s not because I know you like it, I know you crave it, it’s because you’re old and rotting and your breath smells like sewers.”

He’d been bending over the wheel chair with his hands digging into the Doctor’s shoulders. They left purple bruises; of a shade so perfect it was almost too beautiful to bear.

Japan burned, and it was so easy to forgive. The Master knelt in front of the wheelchair and smiled.

“You used to talk so much it made my head hurt. I wanted to gag you. After we fucked, back in the old days, you used to go on and on, and I used to watch your lips and imagine filling your mouth with rags or paper. I would imagine how much your throat would burn…”

The Doctor thinks about breaking bones again. The crunch, the sickly sight of limbs twisted in the wrong angles, of the white pain every time he breathed. He wanted the Master to fuck him and cup his hands under his head; he didn’t long for snapped fingers and his throat clogged by bile-soaked newspaper, but anything would be better than this, with the Master so close to him, but never close enough.

He wants to speak, but he can’t quite bring himself to use that wheezy dead voice to beg to be touched.

He loved the Master then, and he still thought about blood, about the eyes of Martha’s sister, about burning flesh and the definitions of pain. Mostly he imagined fingernails against his cheeks, and cool flesh in the sunlight, as he sat in the wheelchair, forgotten, without water, and craving only fresh bruises.

When he held the Master in his lap for that last time, he thought only about the eyes looking glassily up at him, the eyes the contained the whole universe, that contained love, and pain, and him. When the Master died, he did not let go, but he looked away. He looked away from those eyes and everything that had been contained within them was gone.

The skin on his wrists is light and supple, and his body does not ache. At first, recovered, he could not help but delight in his restored strength.

Now the silence fills him up, like he is an empty jar. He does not think about blood, or about the Master’s cool fingers pushed into the back of his mouth. He is absolved of the guilt of loving the killer. He doesn’t forgive. He can forgive the Master for the fact that someone always has to die, but he can’t forgive him for winning.

He thinks about ice instead. The burn of cold against his cheeks, and the sensation of flying just before he fell.


End file.
